What We've Become
by AHumblePotato
Summary: Part 2 of my only other story, What We Are. Sorry to keep you waiting, if any of you were waiting, that is.
1. Chapter 1

**Here begins Part 2!** (hehehehe)

She was sitting alone in that starlit meadow, wearing only a dress despite the chill he knew would become snow. She was crying, and the instant he realized it, he tried to make his way towards her, but found the air somehow thicker, impeding his progress.

He fought forward anyway, despite the fact that the air seemed to be redoubling its efforts. He thrashed his way forward until he finally won out, and found himself stumbling across a field of lavender. He could hear her crying clearly now, soft sniffles and gasps that sounded so typical of her he could almost chuckle. He went to say something, but lost his voice when she suddenly turned towards him.

Her eyes were gone.

Those eyes that held more fight than any two mammals could muster combined, those eyes that never seemed to rest for too long on anything except what was important, those eyes he had found impossible to deny despite trying every con-artist trick he had ever devised, were nothing more than empty black holes.

Despite every conscious objection he could manage, his own eyes were held wide open, his jaw hanging, unable to scream. She seemed to say something then, but even if she had, he wouldn't have been able to hear it anyway, not over the sound of his own heart shattering.

Nick sat bolt upright in what would have been a cold sweat, had his canine physiology allowed such a thing. In actuality, he gasped a multitude of ragged pants before managing to calm himself down. Just a nightmare. He'd had plenty of those, they were nothing to-

Who exactly was he trying to con here? Even the week after the Ranger Scouts incident hadn't been as bad as this. The soft light of the city lit his new abode with a soft orange glow, and he used it to stare hard at his right paw, using it as an anchor to steady himself once more. It didn't work that well, but he knew something that would.

After a quick glance at his bedside clock telling him it was far too early for anyone to be doing what he was planning on, he slipped on a black tank-top along with a pair of grey sweats and made his way to the basement.

The place was massive, just a little bigger than your average high school gym, and it was here that Nick had discovered how to hold himself together. He found his weighted vest and hard, digit-less gloves and put them on quickly before setting the lights to 'dusk.'

He stood for a moment to let his eyes adjust, then dropped to all fours and entered the array of fake buildings, alleys, cars, and rooftops.

His lithe form, slight but strong, flashed down fire-escapes, under cars, up gutter-pipes and in and out of windows at a pace no mammal using the conventional biped method of travel could ever hope to match. Every muscled moved in a perfect harmony that felt more familiar than he had ever thought it would, his eyes and ears moving of their own accord based on his surroundings, every aspect of his being straining together to achieve his goal.

It was bliss.

There was no time to think about anything except the running, and in that blank he found peace. And after he finished, panting and sore, he would be comforted by the fact that he had become stronger. But not now, now he was running.

He detected, more than simply heard, another mammal enter the large space, and silently made his way back across the false city in an attempt to catch them off guard. It was a futile venture.

"I see you're up bright and early." Remarked the maned wolf called Charlie Walker in his resonant tenor and pleasant tone. "Rough night?"

Nick appeared atop the fake building nearest the door. "Nothing different from every other night." He replied as landed a somersaulting drop to the floor, ending with him bouncing to his feet several feet from Charlie. They locked eyes for a fraction of second before the wolf's arm flickered.

Nick caught the hard rubber knife and ducked the offensive thrust in the same movement. He whipped his weapon up and forward, going for the quick finish, but Charlie simply twisted out to the left, effectively disengaging. Nick followed with a serious of quick jabs at his larger opponent, keeping his other paw back, ready for any counters, and was glad he did so, as several came and were defeated.

Knowing a break in offense would give Charlie more than enough time to riposte and gain the press, he kept on the pressure, knowing that Charlie was still far his superior in this art.

Charlie, unbeknownst to him, was surprised at Nick's already exemplary talent for the wielding of knives. He was already at the point where his own style had made itself apparent through the basics, and it was one that had Charlie struggling to keep up. Unlike almost any other knife-fighter, Nick used every inch of himself in the fight, while most used primarily little more than the upper-body. All except that left paw, kept close for defense. Nick had reached the point that Eli had reached after a year in just one month, and whenever he caught a glimpse of the fox's eyes, he knew why.

Charlie quick-stepped back, and before Nick could pursue, the wolf gently tossed his training knife into the air between them.

It floated up then down at an angle, obscuring for a fraction of a second the line between their eyes. Charlie was already snapping a sweeping roundhouse as Nick's eyes came back into sight.

They were still staring right at him. His ploy of diverting the fox's attention upward with the knife in order to catch him with the kick had already failed.

Nick took to the air, his strengthened legs easily compensating for the heavy vest he still wore, and his left paw shot down, catching the kick's momentum and channeling it upwards and forward again, right towards Charlie. The wolf fell back, leaning away and using his leg to keep balance, but Nick flipped his knife backhand and wrenched his airborne body into a spinning twist, his weapon flashing around and down across Charlie's exposed throat in what surely would have been a guaranteed kill had his weapon been real.

Nick's spin became a roll as he hit the ground and fell into a crouch, facing Charlie, who tottered for a moment before tumbling onto his back. Nick stood and made to help him to his feet, but stopped as Charlie began laughing.

"I haven't been had like that in long time," he chuckled. "How did you see through my decoy?"

"What decoy?"


	2. Chapter 2

Nick's second ever visit to a hospital had been an experience that proved less than nominal.

After waking up mere hours after the operation that removed a fully intact handgun round from his gut, he had scared the devil out of multiple nurses and even several doctors when, in an anesthetic-induced state of panic, he had started trashing the building in search of Judy. Bogo had been surprisingly gentle after arriving personally to the scene, even going so far as to enter the room the staff had managed to trap him in.

If Nick had any idea that he was trapped in a room with the Chief, he didn't show it.

Even Bogo felt something as he watched the defeated fox frantically casting about, tearing open cupboards and tossing sheets into the air with abandon, repeatedly calling out his partner's name as he did so.

"Wilde." He said quietly, and Nick froze before his ears swiveled towards him before immediately being followed by his face.

"Chief!?" he whispered before stepping towards him. "Chief! He's got her! He's got Carrots! We have to find her!"

"I know, Wilde, and we will. But first come over here." Bogo said softly, well aware of Nick's mental state. The fox obliged willingly.

Despite being under the effects of drugs that should have kept him asleep for another two days, Nick stopped stone cold once he noticed the tranquilizer dart hiding in the water buffalo's palm. Bogo noticed just as quickly.

He rushed forward, catching Nick up in a bear hug before the fox could squirm away. He felt a set of short claws rake across his right arm, but grunted through it and pressed the dart into Nick's neck.

Bogo held onto him as his body slowly lost strength to the potent tranquilizer, so he was barely aware of it when Bogo whispered, "We'll find her, Nick. We'll find her."

After he properly recovered, Nick was given a choice. He could go through rehab normally and return to the force but be unable to work directly on the Jack Savage case, or opt for 'auxiliary training' with Charlie Walker and have direct access to the fight against that striped devil.

He chose the second option.

The building had, in most ways, appeared exactly as advertised, which, given his few experiences with these two, seemed out of place. He had even set down his duffle bag and was checking the note he'd been mailed to see if he hadn't managed to miss a part of the address when Charlie opened the front door. He ushered Nick inside and laid out the ground rules, which Nick had followed to the letter.

That had been two months ago.

Charlie had tried to teach him the finer aspects of his craft, only to discover, to no one's surprise, that most, if not all, of his lessons were ones Nick had already hardwired into his demeanor. So instead they focused on physical improvement, and even in that Nick had excelled. He spent many of his waking hours on the false city course, which meant he had spent no small amount of time there. He had started wondering if running had become better for him than sleeping.

Nick cleared a gap between two buildings, and as he did so, whipped three small objects with a single throw into the darkness beneath him. His weapons struck true, and he heard the micro-tazers crackle violently as he landed on the far side, all four of his limbs absorbing the increased impact force of his weighted training vest, which he effortlessly converted into forward momentum and continued onward.

Set within easy reach at various points along his body were his knife, of course, the same handgun Charlie had given him at the pastry shop hideout, another half-dozen micro throwing tazers, and two flashbangs.

He knew how to use every one of them.

Once all of the practice dummies had been dispatched, he dropped gracefully from a rooftop a full fifteen feet off the ground into a super-low crouch before coming back up to his full height. He took note of Eli watching from a spot near the door to the rest of the complex.

"Impressive." He said casually, moving towards the hardly winded fox. "I think you just set the record for the non-lethal approach."

"I try." Nick replied nonchalantly, fully aware of Eli's plot. He was rewarded with the unique mammal rushing low and fast towards him from his left. Nick saw the feint and lashed his own rubber knife down and to the right, nearly catching the larger mammal as he swept across almost impossibly low, underneath Nick's line of sight. Eli, surprised, barely managed to drop into a full slide and rolled away, only to find Nick pressing his advantage.

Suddenly unable to get his feet beneath him, Eli fought a losing battle as Nick slashed rapid-fire attacks down at him. In a last ditch effort, he swept himself around, one leg out, aiming to take Nick's footing and giving him a chance to regain his own.

It worked.

Eli felt his shin connect with Nick's ankle, and immediately turned the force into a quick stand-up spin that prevented him seeing his error.

Nick took the sweeping blow and used it as a catalyst for his counter. His paws shot down as he reached perfect inverted vertical, putting him in a handstand. He kept moving, however, transferring and adding to the force until his legs spun hard into a helicopter kick.

Eli barely knew what hit him. The height difference between them would have prevented the blow from striking his head, but as he hadn't made it all the way back up, he took the hit squarely across the jaw instead. He felt his body reversing the voluntary rotation and was suddenly lying on the floor. He was still cognizant enough, though, to see Nick drop from his inverted stance and think;

"Ow."


	3. Chapter 3

Adjusting to the lack of additional weight was a process that lasted only seconds as Nick became a red blur across the rooftops of Savannah Central. Any vertical surface with enough friction effectively became more ground to cover, and gaps of ten feet or more were inconsequential to him. And yet, any casual onlooker would be forgiven for thinking a slight breeze had passed instead of a fox, for how quietly he travelled.

His breathing was calm and measured despite his tremendous pace, and all four of his paws moved in unconscious concert, his body forced into perfect motion through force of will.

Only the running and his mission mattered.

He had been given the task of stealing Chief Bogo's badge without detection. If he could do that, Charlie had promised to give him first-hand access to, and permission to join, the planning and execution of any further anti-Savage operations when the opportunity arose to commence one. It was something of a graduation test, a final exam of sorts.

For Nick it was little more than a stepping stone to his true goal.

The bright lights of the city center rose before him, and he slowed to a stop atop the tallest spire of the natural history museum. Traffic was light at this time of night, so civilian notice would prove unlikely, but a glance at his watch told him that right then was most of Zootopia's police force would be inside the building, finalizing reports for the day and tagging out to the night shift.

Which meant Bogo would be preoccupied.

He slid down the dome of the museum and within moments found himself perched on a roof that was, unfortunately, almost thirty feet away from the roof of the Precinct. But it was twenty feet taller.

No one ever usually had a reason to look up while walking the city at night, but if anyone had, the sight of a fox wearing blackout tactical gear and flying through the air several stories up would have made them question the amount of coffee they'd had that day. As it was, no one noticed the incredible feat of strength that Nick accomplished before rolling multiple times across the roof of Precinct One.

Any pain that might have accompanied such a landing had long ago been beaten out of his muscles, so he was up and running the moment his impact reducing maneuver ended. He reached the edge that rested above Bogo's office, wrapping a high-strength nylon cable around a venting chimney on his way there. Wasting no time, he dropped over the edge before turning and catching the ledge with strengthened paws that would hold him indefinitely.

He let go and held firm against the tautening snap of his cable and flipping inverted alongside the wall. Bogo had left his blinds open to the night, but the same could not be said of the windows themselves. The Chief, unaware completely to the fox, sat at his desk, shuffling multiple papers and looking weighed down. Nick lowered himself incrementally alongside the window, glad to discover that they were not locked. He wedged an all-too-real knife into the frame and quietly wedged it open, ever so slowly, watching the Chief for any recognition of the room's minute change in temperature.

The moment the gap was large enough, Nick slipped inside after carefully disconnecting himself from his cable, which he left dangling beside the window. Without a sound he dropped to the floor, falling into a low crouch to lower his profile. Bogo shuffled and grunted something to himself and Nick froze before the buffalo settled once more. He made to take a step towards his intended target, but the bovine shuffled again, this time settling his weight forward onto the desk. There was silence for a time then, before the low, rumbling sound of snoring filled the office.

Nick didn't believe his luck until he cautiously crept up onto the desk and discovered the likely cause of the Chief's fatigue. Almost every document atop the desk pertained to Jack Savage and others of his creed. Nick had to try hard not to start shredding them.

Instead he sucked it up and carefully removed Bogo's badge and vanished like a ghost across the rooftops once more.

"One Chief-of-Police's badge, as ordered." Nick said as he casually flipped the item into the air for Charlie to catch.

"That was fast." He noted to no one in particular, and he truly was surprised. Of his admittedly few students, Nick far surpassed even his longest and most devoted student, Eli. Looking at the fox's blazing emeralds now, he felt that there was no mammal alive who could fully release that fire except Nick himself.

He had no time to continue that train of thought, though, as Eli burst into the room. He looked surprised at Nick's presence for a moment before looking to Charlie for confirmation, who simply held up the badge. "If you can tell it to me, you can tell it to him. He's earned it." he said.

"Well, there's not much to tell." Eli said carefully. "It's more a 'see for yourself' thing." He lifted a tablet, and Nick took it.

He tapped the play icon that presented itself and watched.

His grip tightened to the point of endangering the device when Judy appeared on the screen. Her eyes were still flat, soulless, and she wore a simple, innocent sky-blue dress. She spoke, but it wasn't her voice. He hardly heard the words anyway, but understood enough to gleam the gist of the propaganda. Jack was using Judy as a leveraging tool for his cause, casting doubt into the heart of every prey in the city and once again lighting the fire that the two of them had tried so hard put out. Everything she had fought so hard for, everything that she had dragged him through, everything the two of them had stood for was being thrown viciously back into their faces. He couldn't take it any longer.

The screen shattered.


	4. Chapter 4

Being alone was something Judy had never before truly experienced. There had been moments that came close, sure, but growing up with two-hundred-and-seventy-five siblings had made those occasions few and far between. Other than that, only two occasions came to mind. The first being the brief moment at the sky trams when she had nearly lost her dream, and the second being her time spent running the veggie stand. Physically, she hadn't been alone, but emotionally…

She squeezed the not-quite-soft-enough life-size fox plushy with bright-green button eyes and a navy police uniform just a little tighter. She felt that if she didn't, what was left of her would surely fade into the place she knew too much of her already had. She had trouble remembering things that should have been obvious; her parent's names, her apartment address, things like that. But there were other things too, things she knew she should remember but couldn't recall exactly what they were.

The endless shadows didn't help either.

She had found herself huddled with the fox toy in the midst of a seemingly endless plane of darkness, unable to escape because there was nowhere to escape to, and as time went on, she wasn't sure there was any reason to escape. The only thing besides her and the plushy was the huge window-like screen that provided her with a view of what she had to constantly remind herself was the real world. She had no control, she knew, she was merely a passenger in her own body, and although she couldn't recall exactly why, it was a concept that made her quite angry.

She knew that her physical form was tended to exclusively by a shapely white vixen, and only occasionally was she escorted from the large white room granted her for a dose of the poison that kept her locked out of her own head. She hated these because afterwards she always felt like she was missing even more, but not what was missing. Big gaps were forming, she could tell, but she didn't know what had filled them. She had only one thing inside her mental sanctuary, and that was her green-eyed police officer fox plushy which she held onto with all her might.

Sleeping was something she found to provide some respite, but it didn't come often, so she was usually stuck with holding her one beloved possession and watch through her own eyes the white canopy of the much too large bed in the white room, trying to remember his name.

The frantic fluttering was heard long before it reached his small window, so when the tiny winged form crashed into Nick as he threw open the portal he wasn't that surprised.

"Scraggles?" he asked in confusion before he realized that the bat was indeed Charlie's tiny informant. "What is it?"

The bat gasped silently for several seconds, catching his breath. Once recovered, he looked straight at Nick and slowly and deliberately mouthed;

"Found her."


	5. Chapter 5

Nick's eyes snapped open and he quickly took stock of the situation despite small pains in almost every part of his body. He noted the fact that he was laying on the wall of the inside of the van, and that someone or something was bashing on the rear doors. For a moment he thought it might be a rescue crew, but when a heavyset rhino horn wedged between the doors once a gap had appeared and tore one of them free, the realized his mistake.

He was trapped in the back of a sideways van with an angry rhino who likely wanted him dead blocking his only exit route, as the side door led directly to the ground. His handgun and other conventional weapons would only succeed in angering the towering mammal, so his mind took his default route and he prepared himself to talk his way out.

The second door disappeared and Nick's spirits fell.

The rhino was in no mood for negotiations.

He wasn't in any mood at all.

Nick flashed his knife and gun into his paws and prepared to go down swinging. The rhino discovered that he was a bit too large to simply walk into the van, so he crouched low and lumbered towards the practically defenseless fox.

He had solved the height problem, but not the width.

Nick almost laughed as the rhino found himself wedged in the vacant doorway before realizing that his situation hadn't really changed. Then the small window to the cab opened and he felt himself being pulled through it.

"Nick!" Eli said as Charlie yanked the fox out through into the cabin and then out the shattered windshield. Nick suddenly became aware of the sound of suppressed weapons firing, and glanced around to see Eli unloading rounds from his PDW at an unseen enemy from behind the hood. Charlie was similarly armed and began returning fire towards the back of the van. He was suddenly very aware of the _returning_ part of the sudden firefight. Rounds peppered the van from almost every angle, its heavy-duty internal armor the only thing keeping it from becoming something akin to a giant piece of Swiss cheese.

"Good thing for the armor, or we'd all be pancakes," Charlie remarked as he ducked back into their minimal cover, "T-boned us with a truck for an ambush." He scoffed as if the notion were ridiculous.

"And we were so close, too." Said Eli before dropping another agent of Savage.

"Well, we can't stay here much longer if we want to live through this." Charlie said before turning to Nick. "On my mark we make for the junkyard behind us, got it? We'll lose them in there."

Nick nodded, and before he say anything, Charlie shouted and Nick instinctually took off towards the junkyard. He dove behind a stack of barrels, expecting Charlie and Eli to arrive right behind him, but when he looked back at the van they were both still there, holding the line. Charlie looked back at him and waved him on. He knew the way after all.

Darkness had only just fallen along with a light snow, so when the huge overhead lights lit up the scrap-heap, Nick found himself blinded momentarily. In that moment of blindness, however, he felt a presence and brought his still drawn weapons to bear. The presence vanished as quickly as it had come, but when he could see again, he found that his handgun was missing most of the front end, something having sliced it entirely away at an angle without his knowledge. He spun around, hoping that whoever, or whatever, it was had simply had a displeasure with guns and not him. He was surprised to see the same arctic fox that had accompanied Jack Savage at the masked ball standing under an overhead light less than ten yards away. She stood poised, relaxed but more than ready, one paw forward and the other holding a long, crescent-bladed glaive behind her. She was outfitted in a simple business suit, which might have been a point of note if she hadn't just cut his gun in half without him noticing. Why she had a glaive was another thing he had no time to consider.

Nick cast the worthless husk of metal aside and palmed his knife in his right paw backhand and tried to ready himself for the coming fight that seemed stacked against him. Although he wasn't positive, he was pretty sure that even getting grazed by her weapon would be devastating. She'd just cut through solid steel without as much as a flicker of effort. So he pushed everything out if his mind and focused like he did when he ran, but with even that much focus, he only barely managed to dodge her first strike.

The razor-edged blade sang upward past his face, missing by so little that he lost every whisker on the left side of his face. He rolled away through the shallow snow only to have to dodge another breakneck slash, this one taking a millimeter off of his right ear cleanly. She began a series of flowing slashes and arcs until she became a typhoon of flashing blade, forcing Nick into a multitude of dodges that increased in desperation as her speed seemed to increase further. He realized the truth of her weapon then, that her momentum would only increase until he was little more than ribbons. If he was going to have a chance at even just walking away from this fight, then he had to end it soon. There was just one problem.

He had no idea how.

She was too fast for him to close in and turn her reach advantage into a hindrance, and he couldn't catch his breath long enough to use any of his longer range throwing weapons. He didn't want to attempt a parry, the crescent curve would snap either his blade or his arm, or both, so he was stuck in a perpetual state of desperate evasion that could only end in his defeat.

Most mammals, his past-self included, would have simply given up in the face of overwhelming odds and fallen into despair. Instead, Nick got angry. His eyes brushed across the vixen's amber ones and locked briefly for a heartbeat as Nick vaulted over a low swing. He tucked into a tight roll in order to land on his feet an instant before the glaive swept back in from the opposite side again. He quickly set all of his weight into as little of the bottom of his feet as he could manage, not unlike how had treaded atop the snow in the mountains. He read the strike, discovering it to be directed at his shoulder, meant to incapacitate, not kill, but thought nothing else about it as the crescent blade arced sideways at him.

He caught its edge with the toughest part of his knife, the place where the guard met the blade, and used his arm to absorb as much of the impact as he felt he could handle. The remaining force swept him to the side, skidding through the thin but slick snow. It took all that he had to not topple over from the blow, but when he felt the confusion as the swing completed he found his chance and took it.

Over-leveraged and caught off guard, the vixen had little power to stop him as he yanked hard on the shaft just below the blade, nearly cutting himself in half in the process, before rushing the vixen, who valiantly drew her own knife. But she was in Nick's element now, and he wasn't in the mood to let this last any longer.

He left her slumped under the light, unconscious.

The junkyard office looked exactly like what it was, but if Scraggles's info hadn't gone stale, then she was in there, and that was all Nick needed to know. The adrenaline from his fight with the vixen was still cascading through his veins and the darkened office beckoned. He passed a huge, rusty machination that perhaps had once been used to shrink derelict vehicles but had long ago been replaced by something hydraulic. It certainly wouldn't pass any safety tests, it looked like it could fall at the slightest provocation.

He ghosted forward toward the empty-looking office building and pressed up against the door. Every one of his senses scanned all of his surroundings as he slowly eased the unlocked door open just a crack before diving through and readying his single blade. Finding nothing hostile, his stance relaxed a modicum.

Bad idea.

Nick felt something blast into his upper body and send him careening back through the doorway into the snow. He rolled back to his feet before realizing his knife was missing. It wasn't long before he found it.

"Well, I must say that I am delightfully surprised that you made it past Vanessa." Drifted a voice from within the office and Jack Savage himself stepped into the light, twirling Nick's knife on one digit. "Which means I get to see you dead personally, which is ever so much more enjoyable."

Nick growled despite himself but managed to hold his ground. Making the first move was exactly what the hare wanted him to do, so he pointedly avoided doing exactly that. The hare took note and cocked his head as if asking a question, then as if he had found an answer, he tossed the knife aside and seemed to vanish.

If Nick had not been expecting such a move, the fight would have ended right then and there. But that wouldn't be much of an ending, would it?

Nick read the flying snow instead of his opponent's movements, and leaned back to avoid the sudden, angled axe-kick that whistled harmlessly past his face. Jack recovered too quickly for Nick to counter, however, forcing him to play defense as the hare cracked off a series lightning quick aerial kicks that Nick deftly managed to avoid by keeping low to the ground. He was reminded of his multitude of sparring matches with Judy, whose combat style was quite similar.

He'd never won one of those sparring matches.

But he wasn't fighting Judy. He was fighting a mammal that embodied everything she had fought against, everything she had come to realize her dream for, everything he had come to believe in. The hare pressed his sudden advantage, finding that Nick had slowed to blocks instead of dodges.

Nick felt every stinging blow as the hare rained his fury upon him, swaying and moving back to prevent serious hits from connecting too solidly, and used the pain to spark the anger that had been smoldering within him since the night that he had lost her.

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his instincts and training handle the fight momentarily. He saw all that he needed to see.

Jack wasn't dumb enough to think that the fox had given up, but when the punch came through, it did surprise him. Jack had always been keenly aware of his species' failings when it came to power and survivability, and had always relied on having to avoid any returned blows by either unrelenting barrage or swift dodges, so how Nick had hit him he wasn't entirely sure. Nick felt his fist connect with the hare's abdomen and heard him gasp as he was launched backward across the snow. He landed on his feet though, sliding slightly in the snow. He glanced back up and grinned momentarily at the fox before his expression took a turn for the worried.

Nick was much farther away than he had reckoned, and when he saw his own blood spattering the disturbed snow with each breath he took, he realized he'd been hit a lot harder than he had reckoned too. Suddenly unsure about the duel's outcome, he fumbled about with plan B before revealing a small sidearm that he shakily leveled at Nick.

Except Nick wasn't there.

Somewhere during their battle snow had started falling again, and a sudden gust brought the loose flakes into a flurry that reduced his vision to almost nothing. Something brushed against his back and he leapt forward with a spin and fired, hitting nothing. The wind shifted and he thought he saw a flash of auburn and he fired wildly into the blinding white, unable to determine the fox's location even with his keen hearing. Working under the logic that firing enough rounds would eventually score a hit, he began firing in every direction he could manage, even sending a handful skywards. The wind continued and he ran out of rounds.

He tossed the gun away and suddenly he wasn't alone. He only became aware of the fox's presence after a claw gashed his arm and he staggered away from the impact. He threw a sloppy roundhouse and hit nothing, always nothing. This continued until the falling snow started having trouble hiding the drops of his blood. At one point he was sure Nick had bitten off the tip of one of his ears, but he wasn't sure as his mind was starting to have trouble registering his extremities.

It was then that the thought of running finally occurred to him. This would be the first time he'd ever had to do so, and the idea pained him nearly as much as his gut. But he was nobody's idiot. He was about to make a break for it when the wind died abruptly and his sight was returned slightly. He was suddenly staring into a pair of glowing green orbs. Jack recoiled, turning and scrambling away before banging into some metal structure. He fell back stunned, landing on his back against another metal surface. He heard an odd sound then, something like a thousand steel bones breaking.

Oh, and the sky was falling.

Nick barely managed to shield his face as the huge crushing block, brittle in the cold, fell and reduced his opponent to a red spray that coated him and the surrounding area in hot crimson. The sound seemed to also shake him from the state he had found himself in during the mini-blizzard, and he barely stopped himself from licking the blood from his paws. He staggered and fell to one knee for a moment, registering what had just happened. He shook himself vigorously, showering the snow with more droplets before rolling about in a clean patch to complete the clean as best he could.

He found that not all was as it seemed inside the office, as a trapdoor inside of a closet revealed an expansive, hospital-esque lower level that was also suspiciously vacant. He passed several of what looked like labs, and a room that increased his pace. He reached the end of the largest hallway and found an unlocked door that he carefully pushed open.

The room was an odd stark white with no furniture worth noting besides the huge, canopied bed across from the door. Nick, exhaustion finally catching up with him, staggered towards it, leaving faint red paw prints on the white carpet as he did so. He came around the bedpost and nearly collapsed with relief.

She was asleep, curled slightly under a thin white blanket that made her appear so very small and oh-so-fragile. Nick felt his legs give out and he collapsed against the bed, suddenly very tired. His head and arms sank onto the soft sheets and he felt himself slipping into a satisfied darkness.

When Eli helped Charlie into the room several minutes later, they found a battered and sleeping fox half slumped across the bed, and a smaller, much less bedraggled rabbit holding tightly to his arm, fast asleep.


	6. Epilogue

_So this is where our story concludes. I'm sorry if it seems to lack in length, but I simply ran out of plot ideas. This here is the Epilogue, (as some of you may find disheartening) and therefore officially ends the actual storyline. However, there are several ideas and other such fantasies that I have entertained that do not merit extended publication, and have found themselves in something of a strange situation. I have decided to add these after the Epilogue as a collection of so-called 'bonus' chapters. I cannot guarantee the exact number of these additional chapters, nor can I say that they will be at all consistent in their dates of publication, as I will likely post them after the ideas occur and are put to Word document. But enough babbling, you came here for consolidation and a sense of finality, which one would suppose is the purpose of an Epilogue, and so you shall have it. Oh, and thanks for reading up till now, everyone!_

Nick had conditioned himself until he could easily wear his own weight in gear and still traverse nearly any urban sprawl, but climbing the seemingly endless staircase was proving nearly an impossible task. He felt the banister creak under his clenching paw as he slowly set one foot on the next of too many steps. Everything in his head was in a frustrating calm, like his thoughts no longer had any say in anything about him, like his emotions had simply flown away, leaving him gasping on the darkening earth. In a way, they had.

After an agonizingly long time he finally reached the floor that brought him that much closer to the place he had come to dread visiting. Years of conning were the only thing that kept him standing straight and moving forward, letting himself fall back and observe from inside himself, detaching himself in an attempt to protect his mind.

He knew it wouldn't work.

He stood before the door for a time, trying to fall as far into himself as possible before knocking, a process made significantly more difficult because it really didn't matter. Once he felt sufficiently departed, he knocked and said, "Carrots, it's me."

He quietly eased the door open and stepped inside to find her sitting up in the middle of the small bed and staring out the window, blankets wrapped about her in a loose spiral. She turned to him as he entered, and her countenance brightened significantly. She hopped down from the short bed as he closed the door and shuffled quickly over to him, trailing her cloak of soft, blue blanket.

Nick stood stock still as she wrapped him in a tight hug and squealed.

"Nick!" she mumbled into his torso, tickling him.

"What, Carrots?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady. She suddenly pulled away then, and looked up at him with fire in her violet eyes.

"No more leaving!" she cried before pressing her face back against him the way a child might, which Nick was all-too aware of. "No more!"

Nick separated her from him once more and knelt to level their eyes. "I've got to help make the world a better place, remember?" he said softly, searching her face for any sign of recognition.

He didn't see anything.

"But why?" she pouted, her cheeks puffing. "I don't want to be all by myself anymore."

Nick had known that this was how she'd react, and any vague hope he'd had otherwise hadn't meant much. He could feel his heart cracking every time he did this, and he wasn't sure how much longer it would last. If the doctors were right, he'd have to forever. The damage done by Savage's tampering had permanently altered her psyche, they said, and the only thing that had managed to survive was her relation to Nick. Physically, she was still Judy, but mentally she had become childlike, selfish somewhat, and absolutely terrified of anyone who wasn't Nick.

For Nick, it was a waking nightmare.

Nearly everything that made her who she was had been taken from her, and he blamed only himself for losing her in the first place and not being able to get to her in time. Efforts to acclimatize her to even her parents had failed, so he was solely responsible for her wellbeing and comfort, a task that felt like it was killing him. It had been two weeks and all of his efforts to return her memory had fallen flat, so his time was spent mostly keeping her occupied through whatever activity she chose. Today it was hide-and-seek.

Charlie had granted her an entire wing of the training facility dorms to prevent incident with the other trainees, but Nick wasn't worried. His nose would lead him right to her immediately, and once he was near, he would traipse about, feigning confusion for her amusement before catching her and then hide somewhere silly once it was his turn.

His plan changed when he tracked her to the top floor.

Night had been in place for only a short while, but the late winter air took cold quickly, and when it brushed past his feet he only barely managed to keep from panicking. He hurried toward the roof access at the end of the hall, finding to his dismay that the door was open slightly. He rushed through into a light snow illuminated by the city's multitude of lights. He froze only a few steps later, beholding.

She was standing straight, that silly blue blanket still wrapped tightly across her shoulders against the cold, staring up at the stars with a dreamy look on her face. If she took any note of Nick's sudden arrival, she made no sign of it.

Nick sighed and made his way over to her, moving to pick her up and take her back inside. "C'mon, Carrots, you'll catch cold out-"

He stopped as one of her paws let the blanket slip and reach to the sky, pointing. Nick followed the motion and saw a small star that, through some miracle of time and space, was twinkling violet. He looked back down at Judy, who had returned her appendage to the warm blanket but was still looking at the star.

"It's that one, isn't it?" she asked quietly.

Nick felt himself fall to his knees. "Judy?" he whispered, and the rabbit seemed to take note of him for the first time.

"Nick?" she asked, apparently confused. She looked around. "What…? Where are-"

Her query was left incomplete as Nick seemed to ignore the distance between them and envelope her in the greatest hug he had ever given.

"Welcome back." He whispered.


	7. Bonus 1: Training

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Nick asked with a smirk as he adjusted the strap holding his boxing glove on.

Judy was already standing ready. "I need to get back in form after my 'vacation.'" She replied, leaning her weight into her toes and bouncing slightly.

Nick chuckled. "If you insist. Wouldn't want you to start against someone who could properly fight." He said, all too aware that she was unaware of his new skillset. This little sparring match would be quite interesting as long as she didn't catch on.

He settled himself into an easy crouch, bringing him to her level as he would have done before, and waited for her to make the first move. Her opening move was standard-issue, a leaping distance closer topped off with a launching drop kick that would usually end a fight very quickly, and came as fast as she could manage.

It wasn't fast enough, though.

Nick lazily leaned away, cleanly dodging the strike and leaving Judy correcting briefly. The window was tremendously large, but he opted to let the session last a bit longer than that. Judy recovered from the missed blow and came back with a vicious right hook that Nick veritably skipped away from. This continued for a while, Judy throwing everything she had into landing a blow, and Nick appearing to haphazardly stumble away from each encounter unscathed. Finally she gave up and staggered back, thoroughly winded.

"I knew that you were lucky, but this is just ridiculous!" she gasped, confused but determined still.

"Tell you what," Nick said, unbothered by the exertion, "If you hit me with your next punch, I'll tell you a secret." He stood straight lifted his arms out, leaving himself wide open. Judy took the offer, and suspecting foul play, launched forward with all of her remaining strength. She watched in anticipation as her glove came ever so close to Nick's chest, so close that his blue shirt began pressing against his fur.

And then he was gone.

Judy blinked and suddenly found her momentum caught by a slim but solid force around her waist and immediately following found herself in a loose hug with Nick, who booped the top of her head with a kiss.

"Carrots," he said, "Have I got a recuperation plan for you."


	8. Bonus 2: Coffee

The morning began like many of his mornings did. He had arrived early at the Big Donut, as he always did to annoy Judy, had already purchased coffee for him and the usual simple hot cocoa she seemed to enjoy so much, and stood waiting outside the café for her. He had always just assumed she didn't like the taste, so he'd never asked why she didn't drink coffee. It wasn't like it mattered anyway.

The only thing unusual about the morning had been the new barista at the big donut, who would inadvertently cause something quite ridiculous.

Chuck could not have possibly known that the previous barista always did coffee first, and therefore handed Nick _his_ drink first and therefore he would take it in his right paw and the hot cocoa in his left, so that he could more easily sip his drink before Judy arrived to claim hers. As such, Chuck the barista, having heard the order for hot cocoa first, handed Nick the hot cocoa first, and with the Styrofoam cups being practically identical, Nick made no notice. He had also determined the near exact time his drink would be at the optimal temperature, and so he hadn't taken a sip from his right paw when Judy arrived and he handed her the cup in his left paw.

Judy, too, did not immediately realize the unintended swap for some minutes, also cautious of the heat. They walked and chatted their way to the Precinct, unaware of the events to occur in mere moments.

They were only a handful of yards from the rotating doors when a hyena burst through, tongue lolling and laughing in the manner only hyenas could manage. He wore cuffs, but only on one paw. Nick calmly stepped aside and the larger mammal swept past. He could feel Judy glaring at him and he glanced down at her. "What?" he asked innocently.

Judy just shook her head and, hot liquid apparently forgotten, and never one to let something go to waste, especially not free hot cocoa, tilted her head back and tried to finish off as much of the beverage as she could as she started pursuing the escapee.

She made it about four strides before the cup hit the ground, spilling about a third cup's worth of strong, black coffee. Nick popped the lid off his cup and realized what had happened, and was about to make a joke about the mix-up when his clothes, fur, and even his ears were suddenly blown back by a tremendous clap of air.

When everything had settled, Judy was gone. He stood in confused silence for a moment before hearing a somewhat concerning yelp from some distance away. Before he realized it happening, the hyena was sprawled face-down and properly wearing the cuffs on the ground in front of him.

"What the-?" he looked up from the dispatched mammal and saw Judy standing across from him. Her edges were blurred like she was vibrating incredibly quickly. She said something, but it sounded to him like a movie in fast-forward, high-pitched and way too fast to understand.

Then with another blast of air, she was gone again.

Within the next three hours she would break almost every unofficial record held by officers of the precinct, including several of her own. Nick and the others would occasionally detect a flash of blue and grey as another perp appeared at the precinct, stunned and thoroughly confused as to how they got there, so they spent most of their time doing bookings and processing while the one-bunny-army managed to exceed the Precinct's long held arrests in one day record. Even Bogo was at a loss for words.

Nick was just finishing some desk work in his small shared office when the door drifted open slowly and he turned his chair to see a tremendously tired looking rabbit stumble into the room. She seemed only half-awake, and he could well imagine why.

"Well at least I know why you don't do coffee," he chuckled, but Judy was unresponsive. She shuffled to him and promptly climbed up into his lap. He hadn't been expecting that.

She curled up against his chest and fell immediately into a deep and peaceful sleep. Nick had to suppress a flinch as Bogo's head appeared in the doorway. He nodded.

"Make sure she stays asleep." He said quietly. "I haven't seen my officers this riled up for the job well, ever. Wouldn't them feeling any more inferior than they think they are, would we?"

Nick just nodded, and was secretly delighted at his new task.


End file.
